SPEED UP Your Video Editing With This Workflow Trick in Premiere CC

LEARN ABOUT PROXIES AND HOW THEY WILL HELP YOU EDIT FASTER! | In this tutorial, we’ll lay out three different ways to use proxies to enable you to edit massive video files even on the slowest computer!

In this Premiere Pro video editing tutorial, we will talk all about Proxies in Premiere Pro. This will be a deep dive on three different ways to import and create proxies in Premiere, what proxy files are and why they’re so great, how they can make your editing process faster, as well as why and when you might want to use them. This should be the definitive video that helps you understand proxies, proxy files, and Premiere Pro in less than 30 minutes!

Site Exclusive Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

Future-proof your projects by shooting in UHD, 4K, or a bunch of RAW video, but deliver in 1080p or 1440p, so why edit in full 4k and put that workload on your system?

Big files are more difficult to work with on slower systems, when working from slower hard drives, or just as a project balloons and you’re adding effects, color grading, and all of that sweet good-good that makes the final video a sight to behold.

Proxies are like a lower quality version of the files, but it’s different than doing a full import and transcoding the files with something like Adobe’s Media Encoder by hand when you have brought all of your files onto your hard drive.

When you export, Premiere will automatically know to use the high resolution files instead of the proxies that you used to edit the project

Import UHD footage

Show how to convert to Proxy in the Media bin

Watch the work being done in the Progress panel OR in Adobe Media Encoder

Speed through the progress of Proxy creation

Show how to swap the files in the timeline editor (add proxy swap button)

Use preferences to prefer a proxy when available

Properties>Media Enable the Proxies will use a proxy clip whenever it is available

Import UHD footage via the Media Browser

Create Proxy and copy footage on import

Start editing even while proxies are being created and swap them out later

Use Media Encoder to create an Encoder preset

Name the preset

Change width and height

Reduce MBps to 1

Add file name overlay and give a suffix of _PROXY (this will only be added if we use this preset when creating our proxies on import to Premiere Pro)

We can also add and position a timecode if we want

Preview the preset so far by dragging in a video clip as if we’re going to export it and apply the preset and click the preset’s name to bring up a preview (we can also tweak the preset if needed when we see it, if we realize something must be changed.)

Use Media Encoder to then create an Ingest Preset

Give this preset a name

H.264 for the format and choose the encoder preset we just made

We can choose a location here, but I prefer to set the location on import to Premiere just because I’m usually working with external drives and different projects have different drives.

Choose the desktop, or any drive you want for now.

Do this for where the hi res footage will go and also for where the proxies will go

Bring the Ingest preset into Premiere for proper use

Export the Ingest preset from Media Encoder

Import footage through Media Browser and hit “Add Ingest Preset”

Select drop down and choose to save the media for both copy and proxies to locations that you want

Begin the import and start editing (proxies will auto swap in as they get converted and become available.)

TIP: Go File>Project Settings>Ingest Settings and setup to use the preset we created here as well as where files/proxies get saved so anytime you ingest footage into this project, your proxies will be auto created, linked, and displayed perfectly every single time.

NOTE: Open folders for where the high res and proxy footage live on the HDD and compare the files sizes to show just how much of a different a scaled down H.264 w/ low MBps is when compared to a full 4k clip.

Share on

Nathaniel Dodson: I am a young web designer and commercial photographer specializing in music, business, and athlete portraiture. I am a young and energetic individual who has been working in the design and creative field since I first started dabbling with Photoshop in year 2000.